Dry cracked lips can make you be self-conscious and sometimes feel pain around the mouth. Here, find out the causes of cracking lips, symptoms, best way on how to treat and prevent extremely cracked lips. Also find the best chapstick for cracking lips below.
During winter, it is common to notice people’s lips flaking and drying out. There are various reasons for that. The weather itself can cause your lips to suffer dehydration and end up chapping and flaking. At such a time, using some of the best products for lip care such as All-Natural Beeswax Lip Balm can help you prevent lips from drying out. Below, we discuss the symptoms and causes of cracking and dry lips.
What Causes Dry Cracked Lips?
What causes dry cracked lips? When do most people suffer from lip dehydration? Is it a health condition that you should be worried about?
When it comes to those really dry and cracked lips, just using a simple waxy stick may not help get rid of the problem. Address the underlying cause in order to make your pucker look soft and pink. Dry cracked lips in children are also a common problem, and there are a set of reasons for this too. Here are the common causes of drying sudden drying and peeling lips.
- Drying and chapping of lips in children is caused by dehydration. If you have not been giving your child enough fluids such as water lately, you will notice his or her lips slowly peeling off and drying.
- During cold and windy weather, you might notice your mouth drying. This is a sign of dehydration caused by loss of moisture into the environment. It causes lips to dry and flake. If you do not hydrate your body during this time, you will end up with extremely dry cracked lips.
- Cheilitis is a condition normally described as chronic dry and cracked lips. This can be caused by various reasons including your diet, lip makeup products you use and even and underlying health problems.
- Allergic reaction to certain things can cause flaked lips. An example of such items that cause caking lips including propyl gallate that is common in lipsticks. Also, most lip care products may contain salicylate, which is known to cause severely dry cracked lips. Others include sodium lauryl sulfate commonly found in toothpastes.
- Taking citrus juices is likely to cause lip irritation and make your mouth to become sun sensitive. With time, your lips will appear as chapped and drying.
- Allergy to red dyes is also a culprit here.
Licking Lips Can Cause Extremely Dry Cracked Lips - Yeast infection can lead to scaling and cracking of the lips at the angles of the mouth. This condition is commonly known as perleche.
- Diabetics are more likely to show symptoms of flaked and dry pouts. Similarly, those with thyroid gland problems are likely to experience dry skin and mouth.
- Chewing and licking your lips with saliva leads to enzymes in the saliva digesting your lips. The saliva also causes dehydration of your lips and will lead to dry and cracked lips symptom.
- If you are suffering from a cold sore, you may end up with dry and cracked lips. Fix the condition by treating the cold sore.
- Deficiencies of some vitamins (A, B, C or B12)
- Breathing from your open mouth is likely to cause your lips to flake and dry.
Symptoms of Extremely Dry Cracked Lips
Symptoms of dry cracked lips are as listed below. If you notice these signs, ensure that you mitigate the problem as soon as possible. However, if the problem persists, you should see a dermatologist, or try to heal your lips as described below. That said, here are the symptoms of lip dryness and cracking.
- Lips become dried and flaky.
- Sometimes, you will feel a burning sensation as they peel slowly.
- Cracking and bleeding of the lower lip or upper lip, or both.
- Your lips may become sensitive to many things, including touch.
- You will feel the need to constantly lick your lips in order to wet them.
- Dry cracking upper lip and lower lip can turn red and rough, making you conscious of yourself even lower your esteem.
Causes of Dry Cracked Lips
How to Prevent Dry and Cracking Lips
If you do not know what to do for dry cracked lips, learning a few things about prevention can help you keep a healthy mouth and lips. Even on a dry and windy day or season, it is possible to stop your lips from peeling, flaking and even burning. Here are tips on how to prevent flaking and peeling of lips.
- Be extra conscious about licking and biting your lips. Avoid putting saliva on your lips as it dehydrates them instead of hydrating them as many people think.
- Keep your body moisturized or well hydrated to prevent chapping and cracking. As we have noted above, the lack of moisture and water in the body will cause your lips to chap.
- If you normally suffer from dry burning chapped lips, ensure that you use plenty of lip balm. This will soothe your lips. It is recommended to use top quality Nivea Kiss of Protection Lip Care SPF 30 when going out in the sun to prevent peeling and burning sensation.
- Reduce or avoid the consumption of alcohol. It is known that alcohol dehydrates the skin and can cause wrinkles around the mouth and lip lines. Apart from that you are likely to have lips cracking because of the effect of alcohol.
- Avoid smoking to stop flaking and drying lips. Lip dryness can be made worse by smoking.
- Avoid any lip makeup products that may be unsafe or may have a bad effect to your type of lips.
If you find it difficult to get to the cause of dry mouth and cracked lips, avoid habits such as sucking on citrus fruits such as orange peels. Putting metal objects on your lips and in your mouth, especially nickel paper clips is discouraged. In addition, avoid licking envelops to activate the glue. Lastly, it is recommended that you avoid kissing anyone who is wearing lipstick.
How to Treat Dry Cracked Lips
Treatment for dry cracked lips can be quite a number of things. Importantly, you can apply these treatments and remedies by yourself at home. The most important part to keep in mind while working on a treatment for dry and cracking lips is to keep hydrating your body. Apart from helping with dry skin in a general sense, using hydrating products, taking fluids and protecting your lips from loss of moisture will generally help in preventing severely peeling and cracking lips. Here are options you can try to treat the problem.
Cures for Dry Cracked Lips – How to Heal
Extremely dry cracked and peeling lips can be painful, but you can heal them using the tips discussed below. During winter, the cold air characterized with reduced humidity in windy environments can leave your lips with deep cracks on the thin lip epithelium. Therefore, the best way on how to heal dry cracked lips is from below your lip surface. Take heavy emollients to cure your flaked lips.
Another way to heal and cure severely drying lips is to look for products that have ingredients that will heal lips fast. Importantly, choose ointment-based lip products, with ingredients such as lanolin, shea butter, and vitamin E. Most of the best products here contain beeswax and skin protectants such as dimethicone that can fix chapping of lips. Other cures and treatments include the following:
- Use plenty of natural lip balm on your lips. It will soothe your lips and help in making healing fast. An example of a good lip balm to apply is Burt’s Bees lip balm.
- Use medicated lip treatments that are deep conditioning. You can get these from a drugstore or pharmacist near you.
Natural Home Remedy for Dry Cracked Lips
Even sudden cracked and dried lips can be remedied at home with simple DIY procedures and practices.
- Use a damp towel at home to exfoliate your lips gently. It will remove the peels and flakes around your mouth and repair your lips from the cracks.
- Apply a natural remedy of ghee onto your lips to keep them smooth and soft.
- Crush rose petals to make a natural remedy and cure for cracking and drying lips. Apply to restore to soft pink feel and look.
- Seal your lips to prevent moisture loss by applying Vaseline or such petroleum jelly at home.
- An important home remedy for dry lips is to rub cucumber juice or slices on your lips. It will repair the peeling lips.
- Apply coconut oil remedy.
Best Chapstick for Dry Cracked Lips
Chapstick can help very cracked dry lips. It can be difficult to get rid of the peels and flakes fast or overnight, but with the right product for your lip condition, you will find it easy to manage the condition. Sudden cracked lips can be remedied with a good brand of chapstick. But which is the best chapstick to use for very cracked and peeling lips? Here are a few top-rated products to buy.
| Carmex Lip Balm | Vaselin |
| yu be Sephora | Un-petroleum Jelly |
| Weleda | Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm |
| Loccitane | Vaseline |
| Fresh’s Sugar Lip Treatment | L’Occitane’s Shea Butter Lip Balm Stick |
Remember to look for a chapstick that will soothe, moisturize and help with the healing of your burning and peeling lips. In other words, the chapstick product should be able to moisturize your lips and prevent them from drying up and flaking. Some people use moisturizing lipsticks and lip balms that can remedy dry pouts common in winter.
When choosing the best chapstick for dry lips, look at the label to be sure they are mean to moisturize your lips. If it has SPF, it is the best since it will prevent your lips from scaling and darkening. Dark lips are a result of too much exposure to UV sun rays.
Dry Cracked Lips in Children
Toddlers, newborns or kids in general can also suffer from chapping lips. When attacked by cold sores, they may show signs and symptoms of dry lips. There are various causes and some of them might hint to some underlying health problems.
Exposure to the wind and the sun are all common reasons why newborns and toddlers may experience dry lips. Further, diabetes, deficiency of vitamin B, C and A can all cause dry cracked lips in children. See more on treatments, remedies and care for cracking lips in newborns.
In case you find that your lips are dry, peeling and burning, it is important to go for a biopsy test as it could indicate an underlying medical condition. If severely and extremely drying and cracking lips persist despite the efforts to heal and cure them and the causes, it is recommended that you see a health practitioner for advice.
Related
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- Newborn Chapped Lips Causes and Treatment
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